New book on modernism in Sweden

IN THE SUMMER OF 1930 the Stockholm Exhibition attracted as many as four million visitors. This event marked the breakthrough of modernist architecture in Sweden. It was inspired by European precedents, with the Bauhaus School in Dessau serving as an ideological center and the work of architects like Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier leading the way. The functionalist breakthrough happened in a period of intense development, with new garden suburbs being built around the outskirts of Stockholm. One of these was Södra Ängby. The community is located west of Stockholm, and was built between 1934 and 1940. Södra Ängby is a suburban development of over five hundred single-family homes in modernist style, one of the largest sites in Europe of its kind. It was soon mentioned as The White City.

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT SÖDRA ÄNGBY – about the ideas that developed among Stockholm’s urban planners, how international modernism influenced them, who the architects were that designed the houses, how they were built and how we can preserve this national cultural heritage site for future generations. But Södra Ängby has even more to tell us. It tells the history of the new, modern society built on the values of democracy, progress, public health, and community. Södra Ängby is a reflection of the new Sweden that was being born, the political ideas of a “home for the people,” and of the Swedish model of compromise between capitalism and socialism, that would be internationally known as “the Middle Way.” It was a time when Sweden was the most modern country in the world.

THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN BY Claes Caldenby, Eva Rudberg, Laila Reppen, Cecilia Björk, Britt Wisth, Peter Lundevall, Thorbjörn Andersson and others. It is illustrated with original drawings and new photographs by Carl Johan Rönn and Åke E:son Lindman.